Sunday, May 13, 2018

What's The Opposite of 'Upright'?

I have read this report and also this one. Not this one behind a paywall.

Its headlines?


Did Trump's Israel Envoy Support a Radical-right Kahanist Group?David Friedman headed a foundation that was quite generous to a movement whose leaders are anti-gay and support the expulsion of Palestinians from the West Bank
There are several points made: [see final Update below]

1.  The American Friends of Bet El Yeshiva Center donated 48,000 shekels — about $12,000 — to Qomemiyut in 2013.

2.  Mussa Cohen, on Friday told JTA that the group is the same group that in the 1990s was affiliated with the Kach movement.

3.  Qomemiyut is an alias for Kahane Chai

4.  “The Ambassador is not familiar with the Qomemiut Foundation, nor is he aware of any connection between those entities and American Friends of Bet El Yeshiva Center.”

5.  Qomemiyut translates as “sovereignty,” but also shares a root in Hebrew with the word “uprising.”

Based on what I know,

1.  The Qomemiyot that I know and knew of is not in any way connected to Kach or an alias of such. It existed as a precursor to the Ihud Leumi and Tekumah political factions. This Wikipedia article notes it was established in 2006. Here is its web site.

2.  The name is not translated as "sovereignty" nor "uprising". This is a false flag operation. The word is found in Leviticus 26:13 and translates as "with heads held high" or "upright" or "erect" or even "proudly".

Either someone is misleading or is really not that smart.

As I cannot of this writing locate a Hebrew site for this "Democratic Bloc" (it doesn't seem to be this), I am uncertain if they really exist.

I will update.

_______________

UPDATE


I have read now the original Haaretz Hebrew-language report.  That bit about Kahane Chai alias is simply not in there:

JTA claims this
"David Friedman, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, was president of a non-profit that donated money to a far-right Jewish group designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department.American Friends of Bet El Yeshiva Center donated 48,000 shekels — about $12,000 — to Qomemiyut in 2013, when Friedman was president of the non-profit, according to a report by the Democratic Bloc, an Israeli NGO that tracks funding for right-wing groups.The State Department has since 1997 designated Kach as a terrorist group. The most recent State Department list, for 2016, includes “Qomemiyut Movement”, the group’s current name, as an alias for Kahane Chai, an offshoot of Kach" 
But that is not in the Hebrew story of Haaretz which mentions Kahane just so in connection with Rabbi Lior: 

ליאור, תומך עקבי בטרנספר של ערביי יהודה ושומרון, הילל את ברוך גולדשטיין כ"קדוש יותר מכל קדושי השואה" ונוהג להשתתף באזכרות לזכרו של הרב מאיר כהנא. לאחר שליאור הוזמן לחקירת המשטרה בעניין תמיכתו בספר "תורת המלך", אירגנו חברי קוממיות כנס הזדהות עמו שבו נאמו שאר רבני התנועה ובהם זלמן מלמד ודוד חי הכהן. גם השניים האחרונים מזדהים עם חלקים עיקריים ממשנתו של הרב כהנא. הכהן היה דובר מרכזי בכנס בבת ים שממנו יצאה הקריאה לא להשכיר דירות לערבים, ואילו מלמד אמר על כהנא כי "היה כולו מסירות נפש וקידוש השם".


Translation


Lior, a consistent supporter of the transfer of the Arabs of Judea and Samaria, praised Baruch Goldstein as "holiest of all holocaust martyrs" and takes part in memorial services for Rabbi Meir Kahane. After Lior was invited to the police investigation into his support for Torat HaMelech, members of Komemiyut organized a solidarity conference with him, in which the rest of the movement's rabbis, including Zalman Melamed and David Hai Hacohen, spoke. The latter two also identify with the main parts of Rabbi Kahane's teachings. Hacohen was a keynote speaker at a conference in Bat Yam, from which the call was issued not to rent apartments to Arabs, while Melamed said of Kahane that "it was all devotion and sanctification of the name."

Zalman Melamed is no supporter of Kahane or his philosophy.

This report is just one big stretch of the imagination.

___________

Despite push-back here, Kampeas now learns the real story:


In an interview with Arutz Sheva on Sunday, Komemiyut chairman Moshe “Mussa” Cohen denied the JTA report which claimed he had confirmed his group’s ties with Qomemiut.

"It's just horrible. It doesn't make any sense,” said Cohen. “How could it be that a group that was founded after the [2005 Gaza] expulsion, in response to the expulsion, in 2005-2006, could be linked with something else that existed so long before it?"

The two movements, Cohen emphasized, had absolutely nothing in common, and blasted media outlets for claiming his group had been declared a terror organization by the US State Department, stating that the JTA article which cited him had misrepresented his statement.

"Somebody called me, speaking in Hebrew that was difficult to make out, and asked me 'is the Komemiyut of today the same as the Komemiyut that used to be’," Cohen told Arutz Sheva.

Believing the question was whether his organization had remained the same since its founding 12 years ago, Cohen replied in the affirmative. Little did he know that he would later be accused of running a group designated as a terrorist organization.

"There's nothing to connect [with Qomemiut] - we have absolutely no connection whatsoever. How could there be any connection between a group that was founded in 2005 because of the [Gaza] expulsion and a group tied to Rabbi Kahane from decades ago?"

FINAL UPDATE

at the JTA story, we now read:

EDITOR’S NOTE: An earlier version of this story said that Qomemiyut is on the U.S. State Department designated terrorist list. The State Department list includes a group by that name, but the group that received the donation says it is not the same group, noting that the current iteration was established in 2006, seven years after the State Department started including an earlier group with the same name on the list. In response to a question from JTA, the director of Qomemiyut appeared to confirm his group was the same as the older group. But in a subsequent interview with Arutz Sheva, he said he had misunderstood the question and insisted the groups were not connected.


^

1 comment:

Joe in Australia said...

Yisrael, if you're in contact with any of the people mentioned you should tell them that it's very important they get the papers to publish a retraction. Otherwise, the allegation will hang around forever and the explanation will be forgotten.